“Do you, by chance, read the London Diary?”
Isabel gave her head a slow shake.
“No, you don’t seem the type. Well, it’s a scandal sheet that my father owns, although few in Society know it.”
“Is this one of the publications he won in a bet?” Isabel had the presence of mind to ask.
Miss Fox nodded. “Would you like to know why Cheswick and I are here?”
“You’re friends of the Duke and Duchess?” One had to ask the question, even if one already knew the answer.
Miss Fox hesitated. “A rather powerful man has given the London Diary exclusive rights to the story. Splashed across the front page the headline will read: ‘Savior or SEDUCER of St. Giles?’ Rather salacious and attention-grabbing, wouldn’t you agree?”
The words emerging from Miss Fox’s mouth kept getting worse and worse. Would there be no end to them?
“When?” Isabel croaked.
“In a few days’ time, I should imagine. The story is quickly developing.”
“Why are you telling me?”
Miss Fox’s sharp eye held Isabel’s for a charged moment. “I like you.”
Isabel wasn’t sure she could return the sentiment. “Why have you agreed to run the story?”
“One should always be cautious to whom one becomes indebted. My father exercises no such caution.”
Isabel only now noticed they’d circled around to the mercantile when a door jangled open and out poured Eva with the Misses Bretagne and Radclyffe, tidy parcels in hand.
A happy flush brightened Eva’s cheeks. She did love a successful shopping excursion. “Isabel, I hope you’re ready to sew this afternoon.” She addressed her next words to Miss Fox. “Would you happen to be handy with a needle? We’ll be needing all hands on deck.”
“I fear not,” Miss Fox demurred. “I’m sorely vexed that I shall miss tonight’s entertainment. I do enjoy a village musicale. So many ranges and varieties of talents.”
As their party moved along, Isabel remained linked arm in arm with Miss Fox.
“Lady Percival,” Miss Fox began, “I do hope I haven’t shocked you too deeply with my tale.” A leaden beat of time passed. “It was related with the sincerest of intentions. Now, if you will pardon me, I must fetch my reading spectacles from the library.”
Although she did believe the intention behind Miss Fox’s revelations to be meant for good, Isabel’s overriding feeling as she watched the woman stride away, her feet a determined click-clack against gray cobblestone, was good riddance. For it was clear: Miss Fox knew her marriage to Percy was a falsehood. It was no coincidence that she’d arrived with Montfort. He’d brought her and Cheswick to Gardencourt Manor for the express purpose of exposing the ‘Seducer’ of St. Giles.
“Do not call me by that silly name.”
Percy was the Savior of St. Giles.
It was a shock, to be sure, and, yet . . .
It wasn’t.
She should have seen it before now. But she’d been blinded, initially by her failure that first night, then by the flurry of events thereafter. In truth, she hadn’t given the Savior of St. Giles a passing thought. The phantom hero of harlots was nothing to her.
Except, now, she knew he was no mere phantom.
Now, she knew he was very much a man.
The revelation, and its implications, stole her breath away. Percy hadn’t been in that gaming hell to dive into the sea of iniquity. He’d been there to drain it.
A powerful man—Miss Fox’s words—was looking to expose Percy. Isabel knew of one such powerful man. Lord Bertrand Montfort. He would take issue with the Savior of St. Giles’s interference with his operations.
And the Savior of St. Giles was Percy? The knowledge only compounded the feelings that had been accumulating for him, and complicated them, too. For here was the terrible truth of the matter:
Montfort intended her to be the instrument of the Savior of St. Giles’s ruin, of Percy’s ruin.
What if, clawed a thought to the surface . . . What if she warned Percy what was about to befall him and, by extension, his family?
Family . . . What about her family? What would befall Papa and Eva and Ariel if she issued such a warning? Montfort would take no such betrayal lightly. The repercussions would be swift, fierce, and final. Yet how could she betray Percy, the man who had claimed not only her body, but likely, too, her heart?
She must push aside her heart. It had no say in the matter, not when she held her family’s future in her hands. Yet another layer accumulated by life. This one would be thicker and heavier and harder than all the others combined.
So thick, heavy, and hard it might crush the heart it protected.
Chapter 22
What made the assembly shine?
Robin Adair.
What made the ball so fine?
Robin was there . . .
Although a girl of no more than twelve years sang “Robin Adair” before the assembly, Percy felt the song’s sentiment down to his soul, which replaced Robin with Isabel.
Wearing her Sunday finest, the girl soldiered on through the popular, melancholic tune with a sweet soprano voice that filled the assembly room up to its high coffered ceiling and couldn’t help but pull emotion from the most hardened of hearts, even as a telling shake trembled through it, a tremor that understood she sang for a duke. In fact, the entire village was keenly aware of the Duke of Arundel and his family sitting prominently in the front row.
Intermission couldn’t arrive soon enough for Percy. It wasn’t the performances, both vocal and instrumental and of varying quality, that had him tapping his fingers impatiently on his knee. He’d rather enjoyed them, truth be told. Rather, it was the seating order.
Somehow, he’d come to sit at one end of the row and Isabel at the other, the entire family between them. Further, every time he tried to catch Isabel’s eye, the Duchess was making a sotto voce observation into her ear.
At last, the girl ended the song on a note that only slightly cracked, and the gathered broke into bright applause. The girl beamed with a shy smile that held no small amount of relief as she bobbed a quick curtsy and scurried off the small raised platform. The mayor, one Squire Noble, hastened into her place. “Shall we adjourn for refreshment and reconvene at the half of the hour?”